Profits triple at Penta Consulting

Specialist IT & Telecoms staffing company Penta Consulting has posted record breaking results for the 11 months ended 31st March 2008.

Financial highlights
ï Turnover of 48.1m 8% annualised increase (11 months)
ï Net fee income (gross profit) up 7.5% to 8.4m (11 months)
ï Operating profit up 162% to 3.4m (11 months)
ï Profit before taxation up 209% to 3m (11 months)

With over 50% of total revenue now coming from International clients, covering more than 85 countries, these results reflect the significant benefits of a truly global business.

Paul Clark, Group Managing Director comments:

ìThese results for the eleven months to the end of March 2008, which include a tripling of our pre tax profits, reflect an outstanding year for Penta Consulting. It is particularly gratifying, linked as it is to our tenth anniversary year and our tenure of the Queenís Award for Enterprise.

We continue to focus on our core competency of specialist ICT recruitment services and as a market leading niche operator, our aim is always to select quality business in order to capitalise on high margin opportunities.

Over the past year, we have taken the steps we believe necessary to consolidate our business and take advantage of our international strength. Not only have we achieved significant profitability but we have also generated substantial cash flow and radically reduced bank borrowings by 32% in the year and a further 53% in the first quarter of this financial year. This enabled payment of a 1.1m dividend.

Coupled with structural changes within the business, our organic growth strategy is driving our profits and we are now setting our sights on expanding our business both organically and through acquisition.

Attracting and retaining talented staff, who we then train and nurture, is key to our successful performance and we have expanded the share ownership scheme within the business so that 33% of staff now have a stake in the business. We are also pleased to report that strong trading is continuing and that our pre-tax profit for the first quarter of 2008/09 is up 86% on the same period last year, producing a net return against sales of 9.7%.î